The EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 Review: iCX Brings the Lights and Sensors

Power, Temperature, & Noise

As expected given the NVIDIA-standardized GTX 1070 Ti clocks, the standard benchmarks for the GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 were rather humdrum in terms of raw performance, sticking closely to the reference Founders Edition card. Nevertheless, the FTW2's custom features certainly come into play for power, temperature, and noise, factors not to be underrated especially when compared against typically louder and hotter reference blower models. Generally speaking, modern GPU boost technology will typically take advantage of a board’s better power and temperature characteristics for longer and higher boosts, but with mandated reference clockspeeds the GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 simply operates cooler and quieter.

Though it does appear that the GTX 1070 Ti boosts a little higher and more consistently, there’s little change for the out-of-the-box GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 performance compared to the Founders Edition. For the majority of the standard benchmarks, the difference was within the margin of error.

As for power, the GTX 1070 Ti FTW2’s extra capabilities are rather muted at stock. At idle, the board turns off the fans under certain temperatures – the default master BIOS has a 60 degree threshold – and technically speaking, the LEDs pull some power, but total system consumption rarely reflects such small differences and adjustments.

While the stated TDP remains 180W, the GTX 1070 FTW2 does possess two 8-pin PCIe power connectors over the Founders Edition’s single 6-pin. Considering the default 100% power limit, this extra power draw capacity can hardly be used in most applications, and for Battlefield 1 system consumption only ends up around 8W higher. But a power virus like FurMark has much less qualms about taking as much as it can, with the GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 immediately pulling a little extra, in the region of 30W at the wall.

Like most high quality custom boards, the GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 can maintain a typical idling temperature with passive cooling. Under load, the fans kick in and the card settles just below its default 72 degree throttle point, even while running FurMark.

At idle, of course, the graphics card utilizes zero fan speed idle. Under load, the cooling design proves capable enough with the fans at a relatively low speed, resulting in a rather quiet profile. Both fans ramp up asynchronously, and both unsurprisingly ramp up higher in FurMark, which features higher temperatures across all the iCX sensors. The general idea behind asynchronous fans can be seen in how the right fan speeds up in response to higher memory and PWM temperatures.

This kind of power, temperature, and noise profile will suit some just fine: a quiet card with purposeful temperature LEDs, all without user intervention. Others will immediately notice the unutilized headroom. With XOC Scanner, EVGA looks to court the former by with a single-step automatically applied overclock. And on that note, we move on to the overclocking…